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XXX
SOMEWHAT TO THE
surprise of all of us at the Prieure, the
Russian family that Gurdjieff had met in Vichy took him up on
his invitation to visit the school. After welcoming them per-
sonally, he arranged for someone to entertain them during the
afternoon, and then closeted himself in his room with his
harmonium.
That evening, after another "feast", the guests were told to
come to the main salon at a certain hour, and they retired to
their rooms. During that time, he assembled all the rest of us
in the salon and said that he wanted to explain, beforehand, an
experiment which he was going to perform on the daughter. He
reminded us that he had told us before that the daughter was
"particularly hypnotizable" but he now added that she was one
of the few people he had ever met who was susceptible to
hypnotism of a special sort. He described the more or less
popular form of hypnotism which usually consisted in requiring
the subject to concentrate on an object before hypnotism could
be induced.
He then said that there was a method of hypnotism, generally
unknown in the western world, that was practised in the Orient.
It could not be practised in the western world for a very good
reason. It was hypnotism by the use of certain combinations of
musical tones or chords, and it was almost impossible to find a
subject that responded to the western or "half-tone" scale on,
for example, an ordinary piano. The special susceptibility of
the Russian girl who was visiting the Prieure with her parents
was that she was actually susceptible to combinations of half-
tones, and it was this factor that was unusual about her. Given
an instrument which could produce audible differentiations of,
say, sixteenth-tones, he would be able to hypnotize, in this
musical manner, anyone of us.
He then had M. de Hartmann play, on the piano, a compo-
sition which he had written that very afternoon, especially for
this occasion. The piece of music came to a kind of climax on a
particular chord, and Gurdjieff said that when this chord was
played in the presence of the Russian girl, she would immedi
ately go into deep hypnosis, completely involuntary and
unexpected on her part.
Gurdjieff always sat on a large, red couch at one end of the
main salon, facing the entrance to the room, and when he saw
that the Russian family was approaching, he indicated to M. de
Hartmann that he was to begin to play, and then motioned to
the guests to come in and seat themselves as the music was
playing. He indicated a chair in the centre of the room for the
daughter. She sat down in it, facing him and in full view of
everyone in the room, and listened to the music intently, as if
very moved by it. Sure enough, at the given predicted moment
when the particular chord was played, she seemed to go com-
pletely limp and her head fell against the back of the chair.
As soon as M. de Hartmann finished, the alarmed parents
rushed to the girl's side and Gurdjieff, standing by them, ex-
plained what he had done and also the fact of her very unusual
susceptibility. The parents calmed down soon enough, but it
took more than an hour to bring the girl back to consciousness,
after which she was for perhaps two additional hours in a highly
emotional, completely hysterical state, during which someone --
designated by Gurdjieff -- had to walk up and down on the
terrace with her. Even after that, it was necessary for Gurdjieff
to spend a large part of the night with her and her parents in
order to persuade them to stay on at the Prieure for several
more days, and to convince them that he had not done her any
irreparable harm.
He was apparently completely successful because they did
agree to stay on, and the daughter even obliged him by sub-
mitting to the same experiment two or three times again. The
results were always the same, although the period of hysteria
after she returned to consciousness did not last for quite so long.
There was, of course, a great deal of talk as a result of these
experiments. A good many people seemed to feel that there had
been connivance on the part of the girl, and that there was no
proof that she was not working with him. Even so, and without
any medical knowledge, it was unquestionably true that she
had been hypnotized, with or without her cooperation. Her
trance was always complete, and no one could have feigned the
manifestations of absolutely uncontrolled hysteria which always
resulted.
The purpose of the experiments was something else again.
They may have been conducted to dramatize the existence of a
form of "science" which was unknown to us, but they also
seemed, to some of us, just another demonstration of the way
Gurdjieff would often "play" with people; they certainly stirred
up another series of questions about Gurdjieff's work, his aims,
and his purposes. The fact that the experiments seemed to prove
a certain amount of unusual power and knowledge on his part
was not, finally, necessary to most of us. Those of us who were
at the Prieure of our own choosing hardly needed such demon-
strations to prove to us that Gurdjieff was, at least, unusual.
The experiments reawakened some of my questions about
Gurdjieff, but more than anything else they produced a
certain resistance in me. What I began to find difficult and
irritating about just such things was that they tended to lead
me into a realm in which I was lost. Much as I might have
liked, at that age, to believe in "miracles" or to find reasons and
answers concerning man's existence, I wanted some sort of
tangible proof. Gurdjieff's own personal magnetism was often
enough proof of his superior knowledge. He was generally
credible to me because he was sufficiently "different" from
other people -- from anyone I had ever known -- to be a con-
vincing "super" man. On the other hand, I was troubled
because I would always come up against a seemingly obvious
fact: anyone who sets himself up as a teacher in any mystical or
other-worldly sense had to be some sort of fanatic -- totally
convinced, totally devoted to a particular course, and, therefore,
automatically opposed to the socially accepted, generally
recognized, philosophies or religions. I t was not only difficult to
argue with him, there was nothing to argue against. One could,
of course, argue about questions of method or technique but
before that it was necessary to have agreed on some aim or
purpose. I had no objection to his aim of "harmonious develop-
ment" for mankind. There was nothing in the words that
anyone could oppose.
It seemed to me that the only possible answer would have to
lie in some sort of results: tangible, visible results in people --
not in Gurdjieff -- he was, as I have said, convincing enough.
But what about his students ? If they had been practising his
method of harmonious development for several years, most of
them, wouldn't it be somehow visible?
Except for Madame Ostrovsky, his deceased wife, I could
think of no one other than Gurdjieff himself who had "com-
manded" any sort of respect by the simple fact of their presence.
One thing that a great many of the other, older students did
have in common was what I thought of as a kind of "affected
serenity". They managed to look composed and controlled or
unruffled most of the time, but it was never quite believable.
They gave an impression of being outwardly controlled that
never rang quite true, particularly as it was easy enough for
Gurdjieff to upset their equilibrium whenever he chose to do
so, with the result that most of the senior students were always
alternating between states of outward calm and hysteria. Their
control seemed to me to be achieved by repression or suppres-
sion -- I always felt that these words were synonyms -- which I
could not believe was desirable or worthwhile as an aim, other
than socially. Gurdjieff frequently gave the impression of
serenity , also, but it never seemed to be false in his case --
generally speaking, he manifested whatever he happened to
want to manifest at a particular time, and usually for a reason.
One might well argue with the reason, and discuss his motives
at length, but at least there was a reason -- he appeared to
know what he was doing and to have a direction; which was
not so in the case of his students. Where his students seemed
to attempt to rise above the ordinary tribulations of life by
affecting a certain disregard for them, Gurdjieff at no time
manifested calmness or "serenity" as if it were an aim in itself.
He was far more likely to fly into a rage or to enjoy himself in
an apparently uncontrolled fit of animal spirits than any of his
students. On many occasions I heard him mock the seriousness
of people, and remind them that it was essential for any well-
rounded human being to "play". He used the word "play" and
pointed out the example of nature -- all animals knew, as
humans did not, the value of "playing" every day. It seemed as
simple as the trite "all work and no play makes Jack a dull
boy" ; no one could accuse Gurdjieff of not playing. By com-
parison his elder students were lugubrious and morose and were
not very convincing examples of "harmonious development"
which -- if it was generally harmonious -- would certainly in-
clude humour, laughter, etc., as at least aspects of well-rounded
growth.
The women, particularly, were no help. The men, at least
in the baths and at the swimming pool, did engage in earthy
backyard human humour and seemed to enjoy themselves, but
the women not only did not indulge in any humour, they even
dressed the part of "disciples", wearing the kind of flowing
clothing that is properly associated with people who become
involved in "movements" of whatever kind. They gave the
outer impression of being priestesses or novitiates in some
religious order. None of it was either enlightening or convincing
to a thirteen-year-old.
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